


Jo Harvelle's Soul

by dirgewithoutmusic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: After death, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Heaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 17:37:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some thoughts on what Jo's heaven would have looked like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jo Harvelle's Soul

Jo is a clattering accumulation of every man and woman who has walked through the doors of the Roadhouse, the same way Sam and Dean are built of a thousand long stretches of asphalt, the rumble of Baby’s engine, and the patterns of cracks and mildew painted across each motel ceiling.

A hundred thirsty hunters have poured their lives into Jo’s ears, trying to flirt or teach or scare or mourn. She didn’t weep with them or rejoice at their victories, just gathered them up greedily, held them close. She wanted a larger world than the one she was allowed, so she built it herself on other people’s words. 

The Winchester’s heaven ran along a road, stringing together the brightest moments of their lives—for Sam, escape. For Dean, love. 

At the age she died—young, having spent so much of her life between those tavern walls and aching to escape until the moment they burned to the ground—Jo’s heaven would have been a series of doors. She’d have to choose between picking each one or breaking them down. (They would never open easy). 

As Jo wandered through moments (of her father bursting through the doors, arms wide—of standing at the bar counter after hours with her mom, disassembling and cleaning gun after gun while they sang along to the radio—stabbing out at a killer through the bars of the trap she was shaking in, because fury is a kind of joy, fighting back is a kind of beauty) as she stepped from moment to moment of her remembered life Jo would stumble into scenes that weren’t hers.

Memories had soaked into the walls of the Roadhouse for decades, bloody stories, violent, tragic, victorious, stories of camaraderie and gumption, stories a little blond girl had swallowed whole and made her own. Where Sam’s was moments where he was allowed to be something other than a Winchester, Jo’s heaven would be laced with other people’s terrifying stories. 

She of all people would find her way to Ash’s base. The space he created was her home after all, those old boards she had wished so hard to leave behind, old boards she had mourned when they burned.

But more than that: this is a girl who grew up putting herself in other people’s worlds. She was a scraped-knees kid pleading for stories, or an amateur barkeep pouring a whiskey and offering a professionally sympathetic ear. She’d slip into their heavens the same way she stole their stories. 

(And what she and Ash might get up to then, a few hacks into angel radio, a rifle in her hands, a bit of home turf to defend and a whole heaven to conquer…)


End file.
